Pete (Sean Marshall) is a sweet orphan boy who had the unfortunate luck to be essentially purchased by the Gogan family, not so they could have a little boy to love, but so they could have a hard-working slave. At the start of the film, Pete has just escaped with the help of a huge animated dragon named Elliott, and the Gogans are on the hunt. There's the matriarch of the family, Lena Gogan (Shelly Winters), plus her husband and her two disgusting sons. When they fail to find the boy, Pete and Elliott decide to move on and come upon the quaint town of Passamaquoddy and decide to make it their home. But Elliott just can't seem to keep himself out of mischief and, before you know it, the entire town is against Pete because of whatever it is that seems to create havoc around him. Since Elliott is invisible, all the townsfolk know is that trouble follows this boy.
When Lampie (Mickey Rooney), the town drunk, spots Elliott during a rare time when he is visible and is talking to Pete, he runs into the local tavern spouting that he has seen a dragon, but naturally everyone attributes it to his normal state of drunkeness. His daughter, Nora (Helen Reddy), comes upon Pete being mistreated by the townsfolk and takes him in to clean him up and help him out.
Elliott takes up residence in a cave down by the water, which is perfect, since Nora and Lampie (and now Pete) man the nearby lighthouse. But soon, a snake oil salesman by the name of Doc Terminus (Jim Hale) and his lackey, Hoagy (Red Buttons), saunter back to town and the residents of Passamaquoddy fall under his spell. Once he hears of a dragon that lives nearby, he can think of nothing but the dollars he could make off of every little piece of Elliott. When Pete refuses to sell Elliott, Doc Terminus conjures up an evil plan to enlist the assistance of the local fishermen, who believe Elliott is the reason the fish have gone away, along with the Gogans, who've come to town searching for Pete, in order to capture the dragon once and for all. Expect a grand showdown in pure Disney fashion.
Pete's Dragon: High Flying Edition does include a 20 minute or so featurette, narrated by the now-grown-up Sean Marshall, which discusses all of the special effects it took to meld the animation with the live-action sequences and it was really interesting to watch. Other new features to this release include the orignal demo recordings of some of the songs, a deleted storyboard sequence, an early song concept, plus some deleted (or changed, actually) songs and some pop variations. Special features from the earlier-released Gold Collection are still there like a DVD game, a Donald Duck cartoon, some classic footage from the Disney Family Album and an art gallery. Strangely absent from this release was a featurette and classic Disney short called "Man, Monsters and Mysteries." Not sure why they would remove this.
This is a fair release if you are really into Pete's Dragon and don't already have the movie on DVD because it does have some extra content that the Gold Collection didn't have, but I'm not sure it's enough to warrant a second purchase. The main reason for this is because Elliott's animation needs some serious remastering. Why can't the movie look as gorgeous as the Elliott on the front of the DVD case? He looks perfect - flawless, even. But in the film, especially in the apple-eating scene when Elliott first appears, it's almost painful to watch. Seriously. Elliott is so pixelly and he looks just atrocious. I know this animation is over 30 years and it was a marvel at the time. I don't fault it for it's age. I fault Disney for releasing this movie again and not doing a major overhaul to Elliott. The rest of the movie shows its age, but it doesn't look bad at all, but Elliott just looks pitiful. I can only imagine that they are waiting for the big remastering and plan to re-release it on Blu-ray. So just keep that in mind. It's still a great movie with terrific songs and a cute Disney plot (although there are some really, really dark moments in this film), but I just wish they had cleaned it up a bit more. I'm not sure today's kids would appreciate the movie as much as we did back in the day simply because they are accustomed to more advanced animation, but Pete's Dragon was amazing for its time and despite my complaints, I loved seeing it again.
